News & Events

The first electrically autonomous feeder will be Norwegian

Date: 17/05/2017

Kongsberg and the Norwegian chemist Yara plan to commission the first autonomous and electric industrial feeder in 2020. In other words, a container transport drone a hundred meters long "zero carbon".

This small container ship will shuttle between the Porsgrunn fertilizer plant in Yara and the two more remote ports of Brevik and Larvik, home to ocean-going ships. It will transport the supplies and the finished product.

Brevik and Larvik are ports to the west of Oslo situated at the edge of two fjords on either side of a cape like there are on the Norwegian coasts. From these two ports, Yara delivers its customers around the world. Currently, the transport from the plant to the two ports is carried out by a Noria of more than one hundred trucks operating on diesel per day, or about 40,000 transports per year.

Objective for this industrial feedering: zero carbon and very little human. The containers will be loaded by jumper and electric gantry, the ship will be docked and will be released automatically on departure and on arrival. The electric propulsion will be powered by batteries.